CHEAP HOMEMADE RIVET MAKER

IT IS SAID THAT NECCESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTIONS AND THIS IS TRUE. NOW IM NOT SAYING THAT THIS IDEA IS ORIGINAL BUT IT WORKS .

anybody who has seen my scratchbuilt models will notice that they are full of rivets. i do have a love hate relationship with rivets, i hate them but i cant live without them.......heard this before as regards to you men out there know what. anyway my venerable and well loved waldron punch and die has been worked to complete worn out. waldron punch and die sets are very hard to get by these days i know there are other makes but i needed rivets im addicted to rivets give me rivets so i decided to try and make my own riveter AND SURPRISE SURPRISE IT worked

all you need are two peices of clear 5mm acryllic/perspex sheet 8mm would do fine if not better.in between sandwich two strips of 1mm pastic card at the edges

add some clearance underneath and drill holes through both sheet, making sure they are as vertical as possible, preferably using a small bench drill

for the punches you can use the back end of the drill bit used to cut the holes or my preferd hypodermic needles. both of which are given a flat end using a disc cutter but i suppose you could sand the edges just as well.

one other thing i do is fix a small spring just above the needle tip to quicken punching.

i hope this can be of use to anybody out there. anyway i though id share it with you guys out there. it worked for me, maybe it can work for you too.

Nonetheless...even with waldron punches (and with Alex's prototype which i have used years back until it fell apart)I find that only around 10% of the rivets are perfectly round and pass my quality control specs. From Alex's pics of the punches rivets you can see what I mean...I dont know if im doing anything wrong the process seems simple enough and yet!

Maybe I'm just daft! I end up punching around 50 rivets and choosing the good ones...

discards are inevitable, one solution is to rub the plasticard with fine sand papaer on both sides, this will remove lamination/glaze from plasticard surface which causes the uneven edges and anyway if you apply some good liquid tamiya thin or mek poly the plastic will slightly dissolve and round up

A think it is a fantastic time saving tool (though I was derided at the club as a 'lazy' modeller). It does cut with a very slight angle which is unnoticable on thin cd but when u cut thicker card stock or tubing it does become noticable. I believe it has a slight angle to get a better cut?

Dottore wrote:A think it is a fantastic time saving tool (though I was derided at the club as a 'lazy' modeller). It does cut with a very slight angle which is unnoticable on thin cd but when u cut thicker card stock or tubing it does become noticable. I believe it has a slight angle to get a better cut?

Dottore

i never derided you cos i have one, but i still think it is almost impossible to cut near a 1000 rivets with it as for tubing you should never cut tubing that way. the pressure exerted by the blade will deform the plastic hence the angle for tubing you should invest in a miniature pipe cutter 1mm-15mm